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Category Archives: Cape Town

On Saturday, 14 May 2016, myself and another 17 members of the Gantouw Hiking Club did a 9.2km hike in the Silvermine Nature Reserve. The reserve was closed for a long time after a devastating fire in 2015 but opened again earlier this year. The hike is a fairly easy hike (about a 2a or 2b maybe) and below is the map of the route we did. The only part us the piece on the left which include a bit of scrambling up rocks and little bit on the edge of the cliff but nothing dangerous.

The morning started out very misty but since rhe reserve is high up on the mountaing range, we were way above the misty clouds below. However this made for some great photographs.

With the sun above us and to out backs and the clouds and mist in front below us, I had the rare experience of seeing a Brocken Specktre … yes I had no idea what it was either but had a person in the group who explained it. It is basically your body that throw a shadow against the cloud below and form a rainbow around your shadow. Tried to photograph it but did not come out very clear but you should get the idea.

We had lunch at Noordhoek Peak bench, on the map above, the point top left. Here we had a view of the sea below.

On 30 January 2016 an attemp was made to break the Kite Surfing world record that was held by Spain at Blouberg Beach, Cape Town. The previous record was 353 kiters which was broken with the new record now standing at 415 kitters.

It was a perfect sunny windy day with perfect conditions for the kitters.

At 1pm the 400 plus kitters set off from the beach in front of Dophin Beach hotel up to Doodles restuarant, a stretch of about 1km. When all was counted and verified, 415 kitters were in the air/on the water at the same time.

As can be seen from the route board there is various routes one can take:

After some deliberation, a route was picked and we set off.

The route was about 10km which took us about 3 hours to walk. The start was at 96m and the highest point that we reached was 470m. The hike is mostly in the shade under the forrest trees. It is a very gentle hike. Here is the route from Runkeeper that we completed.

It was a nice sunny day when we started at the bottom at Kirstenboch Botanic Gardens but when we arrived at Maclear’s Beacon, the miss has come in and we could hardly see in front of us. Just show how dangerous hikes up Table Mountain can be.

Before the miss set in we had some great views from atop of the Mountain.

Flowers on top of the mountain is always beautifull. Unfortunately the Disa is not flowering yet and Proteas neither. However saw some beautifull flowers.

Must say I was impressed with the IEC at my local voting station. I was in and out in under 5 minutes with no issues whatsoever. The one ballot had about 50 parties on it and must say I did not had a clue or have never heard about at least 40 of those parties. The other ballot paper had about 30 names on it and I recognised probably about 5 of those names. I just cannot see how the majority of those on the ballots will get any meaningfull votes.

The oher thing I observed was that the DA had a table right outside the door of the voting station. As far as I know, parties are not allowed to do any cavasing today and under the banner of checking whether your name is on the list, thay came very close to canvasing.

I have now collected a fair amount of stanps and stickes in my ID book. Here is a picture of it

As you can see it goes all the way back to the Referendum we had in 1992 and variuos elections since then. Can you recognised the stamp that was used today? Yes I did remember to blank out my ID number 🙂